Over 550 posts vacant in Indian Police Service, Government blames ‘neglect’ by NDA regime

The Indian Police Service (IPS) is 557 officers short of its sanctioned strength, the government has revealed. Fifty-six per cent of these vacancies — 314 officers — are in the direct recruitment quota, show figures updated till January 1, 2009.

“How did this situation come about? It is a story of neglect between 1998 and 2004, but I shall share the story with you on another occasion,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, making the revelation two days ago.

Chidambaram also announced the appointment of retired IPS officer Kamal Kumar, a former director of the National Police Academy, to draw up, by May 31, a recruitment plan based on an assessment of India’s policing needs between 2009 and 2020.

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Heroin pushed by IPS officer has Pak markings:Anti Terrorism Squad

In a new twist to the alleged heroin racket run by former zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau Saji Mohan, who was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Saturday, the IPS officer has reportedly told ATS investigators that consignments of heroin sourced from Pakistan were delivered to his house in Chandigarh by a smuggler operating on the Jammu and Kashmir border.

According to the ATS, the seized packets of “high-grade” white heroin bear Pak markings like ‘555’ and ‘B52.’ The ATS recovered an additional 25 kg of heroin — its first haul was of 13.85 kg — from a rented apartment in Naigaon on Monday.

Mohan, a 1995 batch IPS officer, was recently posted as the Deputy Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Kochi, and was with NCB in Chandigarh from Feb 2007 to Dec 2008.It was around this period that he also handled NCB’s Srinagar office.

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Sharma, 3 others get life in jail for Shivani murder

Nine years after the murder of The Indian Express staffer Shivani Bhatnagar, a Delhi court today handed life imprisonment terms to suspended IPS officer R K Sharma and three others for plotting and executing her killing.

Additional sessions judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, discarding the prosecution's demand for death penalty to "conspirator" Sharma and hired killer Pradeep, awarded the four convicts - Sharma, Pradeep, Sri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash - the minimum punishment under the murder charge. Their lawyers later said they would appeal against the order.

Shivani was murdered in her East Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999.

Considering the manner in which the murder was carried out, the criminal history of the convicts and that Sharma has served the society as a police official, I do not find it to be a rarest of rare case warranting the death penalty," ASJ Shastri said while pronouncing the quantum of sentence in a packed courtroom.

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